Daily Roundup - 3/23/2016 Intolerance at UC

Jewish Journal: UC regents prepare to vote on principles against intolerance

I like what the Regents are trying to do as an expression of their own 1st Amendment right. I don't believe a political statement pro-against Israel, should be an official position for a State supported agency.

What should happen is behaviour should be firmly enforced:

1. Paraphernalia designed to incite our natural tendency to be offended should be prohibited inside a room where a legal meeting by a political group is meeting. As long as you stay outside the meeting and don't interfere with flow do your worst.

Examples:

a. Nazi pictures with Bibi as a Nazi

b. Israeli flags in a pro PLO/Hamas meeting 

2. Interrupting the speaker should be forbidden 

a. Yelling and screaming to prevent others from listening.

3. Questions and answers should be time limited before each meeting begins.

4. Any physical attempts at interrupting a meeting should result in the expulsion of the participants from the school, as well as their arrest on disturbing the peace.

Infractions of the above should be started by anyone who has proof (simple when everyone has a movie camera) and lead to graduated restrictions up to and including expulsion from the University.

Daily Roundup - Jan 21, 2016

HuffPost: Shooting to Kill--Ethical and Other Questions - Ron Kronish

"These are questions that are very much on my mind these days in the light of the constant killings of Palestinians who attempt to stab or otherwise harm Israeli soldiers and many innocent civilians. I have noticed that these questions are on the minds of other people in Israel, but not too many and not enough, probably due to a fear of speaking out that has been created by the government and by right-wing propagandists in Israel in recent weeks."

What an anti-semitic way of putting the question. 

A. We have the scene: 

1. Right wing regime - Right of center in defense certainly. Socialist by American terms in all other areas. Where is this "regime" calling comes from. It was democratically elected by fairly large margins (30 mandates!).

2. Fear of Speaking -- really, in Israel? You mean fear of not being heard unless you shout? Who in Israel has ever been afraid of speaking? Not the left, listen to the news, to London and Kirchenbaum read HaAretz, fear of speaking? Give us a Break! Total Nonsense.

B. We have the framing

1. "constant killings of Palestinians who attempt to stab..." So stop stabbing, end of problem!

2. No differentiation between those killed by civilians with weapons and those killed by the Police and Military.

2a. All those killed by civilians need to prove that the civilians did not fear for their lives. We saw one case where a shot woman was trying to stab the feet of people nearby before she was shot again and killed.  These are bystanders, thank God armed, and 30 I believe have already been killed. 

2b. In the case of the army and the police, these are trained personnel and you need to prove that any of them exceeded their training. Again there have been dead on both sides, people who were going about their lives, and terrorists that wished to commit suicide by murder. People whose suicide by murder brings praise as martyrs, and cash to their families.

If there was ever a case where the benefit of the doubt needs to go to the civilian, the police, the army, is when people determined to die, try to kill as many civilians as possible. The example in Tel Aviv shows what happens where there are not weapons and sufficiently trained personnel around to stop such crazed killers. Its aftermath shows how dangerous it is not to kill them on the spot when they hide among their neighbors who try to protect them from the authorities while being very vocal about the authorities not protecting them from the same terrorist. So much for fear of the authorities. (see the Israeli news, unfortunately in Hebrew, there is no dearth of speech).

I too was a student in Berkeley in the 60's and demonstrated against discrimination in the South. But blacks were not murdering whites and getting killed in the process, they were getting killed for being black, just as Jews are being killed in Israel for being Jewish. 

Scissors attack in Jerusalem : Very strange. The 14 year old stabs one person (a 70 year old Arab by mistake) and then tries to stab others who manages to hit her with a chair and throw her to the ground.  Her 16 year old companion raised her scissors at the man she tried to stab and was shot by the her victim who was carrying a gun. A policeman who was near by saw what happened and fired at the two, when he approached the one on the ground lunged at him with her scissors.  The result, the 14 year old died at the scene, and her 16 year old companion was seriously injured and is awaiting trial.

"Is it not time for Jewish leaders in Israel and in the Diaspora to question this "shoot to kill" policy? It is both morally unacceptable and pragmatically ineffective. Rather, it appears more to be acts of vengeance and lashing out, which just lead to more acts of vengeance, feeding the ongoing cycle of violence."

No, its time to demand that the terrorists stop terrorizing civilians.  It is time to punish their families who receive hero status and money from Arab sources.  It is time, with Palestinians, to separate them from Jews by physical barriers so that they cannot lightly attack.  Jerusalem may end up divided as a result, and some Arab and Jewish Israelis may need to move to make this separation possible.

These are the issues we need to discuss. How can we remain ethical while protecting ourselves. How can we live without weapons at the ready and suspicions against all who approach.  The psychological toll of this situation is enormous. It is both a miracle and a blessing that there have not been wide spread attacks on the Arab population by Jews who "have had enough."  Our faith and our ethics are strong, but this problem will not soon go away, nor will the problem of good Jews who cannot see the situation except through ideological eyes.

Daily Roundup - Jan 20, 2016

WAPO: The gospel according to Trump -- by Dana Milbank

Once again a Newspaper I love to hate.

"Monday on the thrice- married head of a gambling empire who talks about the need to kill members of terrorists’ families."

If Dana is writing as a Religious person, he just struck out on being Christian, having kind sentiments for a fellow human being, or even treating others as you would be treated.

I went to discover the context of the statement which I remember being that while we cannot influence those that want to suicide with threats on themselves, threats and actions against their families might influence them. "They care about their families"

The rule Trump is proposing is biblical, from Exodus 21:22-24

22 And should men quarrel and hit a pregnant woman, and she miscarries but there is no fatality, he shall surely be punished, when the woman's husband makes demands of him, and he shall give [restitution] according to the judges' [orders].

23 But if there is a fatality, you shall give a life for a life,

24 an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot,

While Rabbis tended to convert life to its value in money and were totally against capital punishment, and Rashi restricts it to when both mother and child are lost, it is clear that at some time some crimes were thought so grave that lex talionis (The law of the Jungle), a life for a life is required. 

Terrorism clearly falls under this category, if any crime does.  We are talking about the targeting of our innocent so as to inflict as grave a social pain as possible, and doing it in the name of total obliteration of our civilization. 

This is done in the context of the aggressor being a tribal civilization where the group, not the individual, is paramount. Clearly a situation in which "it took a village" to create the suicide bomber.

In this situation, inflicting maximum damage on "the village" makes sense, since communal ethics, not individual responsibility rule as an influence in that society.

The question is not, "is it nice, is it humane, is i permissible under international law?" The question is "Is it effective?".

To accuse Trump of making a statement against the common wisdom or our civilization does not answer any of those questions.  We are not willing to commit the trillions and thousands of casualties that it would take to teach Muslims to respect individual rights. But we are willing to blame Trump from making a suggestion which might resolve the conflict without such huge expenditures of capital and personnel, without considering its sociological basis. In the meantime our Western policies allow millions of civilians to die in the ME, and hundreds of millions to be placed at risk by suicide bombers, and rogue nations with nuclear capabilities. As Trump would say: "We got a real problem here!!!  We got a real problem..."

We need to solve that problem. Dana Milbank, other than insulting our intelligence with out of place quotations from both the New Testament and Trump, provides none.

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JJournal: Is Ted Cruz an anti-Semitic hypocrite? - Rob Eshman

"We know Ted Cruz is a hypocrite. The urgent question before us is whether he is an anti-Semitic hypocrite."
End of reading.  I don't know TC is a hypocrite, and no data is presented to convince me.

The fun continues:
1. Cruz comment on Trump's NY values was hypocritical-- Not really, we do thing of NY as a place of left politics (gay marriage, pro abortion..) and money (Wall Street).  It is Hypocritical of Rob to state otherwise.
Trump certainly trumped him properly when he made the comment, but that was one expert debater to another, nothing to do with the facts. You can be valiant, place community interest first, and still be left on politics and have money corruption.

2. Cruz has a successful wife working at G. Sachs.  Great for him.  He mortgaged his home to be elected Senator! Fantastic, he puts his money where his mouth is.

3. He didn't declare his loans. Fact Check has him declaring his borrowings in his financial disclosure papers, but not in his FEC submissions. Since he did declare them in one, not declaring it in the other would only cause trouble so I believe it was unintentional. Not a big deal in either case since he was self funding and that loan was less than 1/3 his total worth.

4. The following shows Eshman is not for any of the front runners:
"But let’s forgive Cruz his hypocrisy. He’s a politician. Trump spent last week pretending to evangelicals at Liberty University he knows the difference between Corinthians and corned beef. Marco Rubio twisted the English language in knots explaining how isolating Cuba is good for average Cubans. Bernie Sanders was against gun control before he was for it. And Hillary Clinton is so anti-Wall Street firms, she is taking away all their money — $300,000 at a time, in speakers fees. "

So what is his point?

5. He is anti-semitic.  YEAH! finally we have what Rob means. It may be idiotic, but here it is.

Cruz criticised NY values -> lots of Jews live in NY. There fore he criticized Jews!!!!

"he knows that by saying “liberal New York values,” he is dog-whistling the anti-Semites. "

It is just incredible that this dribble is placed in JJ! Once more: SHAME ON YOU JEWISH JOURNAL.